OPINIONISTA: Much is beyond your control, but not your golden years By Steven Nathan
Many of us feel powerless as we hear almost daily about the emptying of our national coffers and observe the unstoppable election train steaming towards an apparently predetermined destination, all the while ignoring a key area of our own financial lives where we could stop the decay and the devastation.
Amid the broad outrage that the same people who have looted our national coffers and almost brought the country to its knees will still be in charge after the May elections, it is easy to overlook the outrage happening in your personal affairs, specifically your retirement investments.You may have noticed that apart from the food and automotive industries, only one other business sector is still advertising vigorously on television: financial services.
While the retirement industry is heavily regulated, that regulation seeks only to protect people from losing all their money at once. It won’t necessarily protect them from losing much of their money over time.This combination will reduce their potential annual returns by between 1% and 4%, and their total retirement capital by between 20% and 60%. It will all but guarantee they won’t retire with enough money.
The number of available funds continually grows and there is always increasing investment uncertainty, what with elections, political risk, rating reviews, rand volatility, Brexit, Trump, climate change, ESG, and SRI, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, trade wars, slowing global growth, stalling interest rates, inverted yield curves and whatever else gets thrown into the ring.
But this is of no matter to the industry, which generally does very nicely, earning high fees no matter how well or badly their customers fare.
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